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More tea, Vicar?

In another last-gasp attempt to increase its relevance to modern life, the Anglican Church is trying to work up the courage to “bless” gay “marriages”:

Gay couples could soon be allowed to “marry” in church after a decision by Anglican bishops and other clergy to support a relaxation of the ban.

Now, I’m feeling like an equal-opportunities giver of offence today, so I’ll make it clear that I have no axe to grind with fairies, sky-fairy supporters or sky-fairy supporting fairies. Oh, and I’m not a huge fan of marriage either.

I used to go to church, but I always struggled to believe. Having said that, I can understand why some people feel the need for a rudder in their life, some eternal verities, to which they can cling as they try to make sense of a world. But the problem with this is that the world keeps changing and keeps disproving the “eternal” verities and our attitudes to these verities. This is why fundamental Islam (and to a lesser extent, fundamental Christianity or Orthodox Judaism) is such an attractive belief system for the truly rudderless – they are inflexible and very slow to change and provide a great deal of constance to those who need it. But at the other end of the scale, we have a faith in a sky-fairy that is, in itself, rather rudderless: the Church of England.

Every fashionable nonsense, every whim, every trend represents a new opportunity for a schism and controversy. The rudderless who look to the Church of England to provide them with a sense of direction and stability must be wondering whether the church they attend so religiously (ha! ha!) actually stands for anything at all. Well, other than pontificating uselessly about things that aren’t their concern in the first place, of course! And even when they do make a decisive decision, it’s so tepid that you wondered why they even bothered:

The Church of England, which along with the wider Anglican Communion is divided over gay ordinations and same-sex blessings, will maintain its official ban. But if the legislative prohibition is lifted, as seems likely, the Church’s own ban is likely to be ignored by some clergy.

“The Church of England, which along with the wider Anglican Communion is divided . . . ” Yeah. And they’re also divided over female ordination I believe. One of our local ordained sky-fairy supporters has declared war on another neighbouring cleric who was unlucky enough to be born female. (She’s worth 3 or more of him.) A pox on the lot of them. Don’t you dare try to join our club if you’re not of our minority male, supposedly heterosexual, in no way paedophile, minority!

Well, yes and no. The Church of England at least tries to find a via media, looking for the good in all of us, trying to accommodate wimmin and those of a whoopsie nature – what it doesn’t do is preach hell fire and damnation, doesn’t seek to string young chaps up from cranes in public squares or ignore what priests have got up to in Ireland for years and years. There’s nothing wrong with cucumber sandwiches and tea on the vicarage lawn, and the sooner England reverts to the fold the better.